So the PLP 10 class attended the BC Tech Summit youth innovation day. This blog post is going to be a recap of what the day was like and some highlights or interesting things that we did. Alright let’s start the day at 7:00 am at Seycove Secondary school. We departed Seycove abruptly at 7:05 am with majority of the PLP cohort in the Seycove bus and Simon, Adam and I in our teachers car. Traffic was not bad that day and we arrived around 7:50 at the Vancouver Convention Centre which is where the summit was being held. We were dropped off on level one with our other teacher Ms.Maxwel. This is Where we would get register and get the necessary requirements for the day. There were over 2000 kids that were attending the last day of the 3-day summit. We were put into groups so that we could move smoothly throughout convention.
The day at the BC Tech Summit started off with a couple of guest speakers. The best speaker of the day from my point of view was Brent Bushnell from Two Bit Circus Brent talked about what is involved in being the CEO of Two Bit Circus. Two Bit Circus is a company that uses technology and science to provide entertainment that is imaginative and interactive. They employ scientists, roboticists, artists, storytellers, engineers and entrepreneurs. He also talked a bit about his life. Brent went to UCLA where he studied business. When was at UCLA he met his friend and businesse partner Eric Grabman. The pare started to create and build interactive art. After that they made a couple commercials using 360 cameras. Then they made a very creative music videos that went viral. Brent went on to talk about innovation, and he gave a very interesting statistic that stuck with me. He said that 65% of graduates will have a job that doesn’t even exist now. That is really striking and could be worry sum for some people. Not having security and specific job titles to aim for can worry some people. Technology is a driving part of these changes.
After we listened to Mr. Brent Bushnell talk about Two Bit Circus at 10:45 it was time to explore the summit a little. Since there were so many kids at the summit some different university around Vancouver such as SFU and UBC had booths there that you could go and talk to some university representatives about different career options that are centred around technology. I went and visited SFU where they had an exhibit on AI or artificial Intelligence. AI is helpful when robots can teach languages, pick things up for seniors or find out information like Siri from Apple. This seems like a growing computer science field that relies heavily on technology.
After we were done visiting the universities it was time to move on to the mentor part of the summit. So there were tables set up around the convention centre’s main ballroom. There would be a person sitting at each table and we would sit down at a table and that person would tell us about what they do for a living. My group had a woman ( insert name here ) that worked at life labs. Lifelabs does medical tests for doctors to help figure out if patients are healthy or what is wrong with them. A group of my friends and I asked her some questions about what she does and we recorded the whole thing and made it into a podcast. I will link the podcast below. Link to podcast.
It was approximately 12:00 and time to head to the main convention level where the public could visit. There were some very interesting exhibits up on the main level. My friend Kyle and I Saw a crowd of people standing around so like any normal human beings we went to go see what the commotion was about. We pulled up to a somewhat real looking mannequin. Kyle being the curious boy that he is asked what was going on and the man said that this was a robot that helps train nurses. He said that when he pushed this button a baby would come out of the robot. He asked for a volunteer to help deliver the baby and Kyle stepped right up. The instructor proceeded to instruct Kyle how to deliver the baby. And sure enough he did just that. Kyle left the summit that day a proud father. Sure enough days later a picture of Kyle delivering his baby shows up in the paper.
12:30 roles around and it is time for lunch.
1:00 and its time to sit down and listen down to some more talks. We listened to a wrestler talk about how he got to be a Canadian heavy height champ as well as his story that he said hopefully inspired us.. We had the option to go upstairs and explore a little more.
It was 2:00 and time to listen to the last speaker of the day. His name is Ryan Holmes, and he is the founder and CEO of HootsuiteHootsuite has a dashboard that helps organize people’s different types of social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+. Twitter organizer for business. It is based in Vancouver and has 15 million users. Ryan told a story where he won apple C2 computer except there was one problem. He lived on a farm in Vernon BC with no power. So his father took the computer to a computer store and had them rewire it so that it could run of jumper cables when he attached it to his car. He also told the story of his first business and how they were not big money makers. His points behind the two story’s is that you don’t need to have the best equipment or have the best job to make money you need experience when you are young. Ryan Holmes didn’t start Hootsuite until he was 31 and look at him now 10 years later and 600 million dollars richer.
We were asked to answer the driving question about how BC’s economy has been disrupted by the tech sector. I think it has because there have been some amazing and successful tech companies from BC like Hootsuite that employ lots of people and sell lots of their products to people here. This is a big change for BC from forestry and fishing. My future career could be impacted by the tech industry because I’m sure I’ll be using technology in my job and I’ll have to be flexible because you never know what new jobs will be available thanks to technology like AI. Just look at how technology has impacted high school and learning in PLP in the past few years. It was a pretty interesting day.
